For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon...Jack You may have heard the story, how that, in Dayton, Tennessee, back in 1925, John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was put on trial for breaking the state's Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible….��?. To assist the prosecution, the World Christian Fundamentals Association secured the services of William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska...jack

For your consideration...the above is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

In the last couple of days we’ve looked at the only two mechanisms available to evolutionists to validate their theory, and have been presented with the tiny testimony of the fruit fly.

But even if you could demonstrate beneficial mutation, how do you then explain integrated functions and systems in a creature.

For example, neo-Darwinists believe that subsequent generations of giraffes mutated beneficially to have longer and longer necks. But it takes a very powerful heart to pump blood up to the full-grown giraffe’s brain, 18 feet in the air. A thirsty giraffe must lower that head way down to drink water. While the head is down, that powerful heart, now some eight feet above the head, with one mighty pump, will burst its brain’s blood vessels. So the giraffe needs special arterial valves that can close and regulate blood flow to the brain while it drinks. But now the giraffe sees a lion, raises its head and starts running.

With its head raised the giraffe won’t get blood in time and so will quickly black out. Fortunately, the giraffe also has a unique, sponge-like tissue just beneath its brain that gently absorbs blood to prevent capillary damage while the head is down, and then gently contracts and squeezes this blood into its brain while the head raises, preventing the giraffe from fainting until blood from the nearest re-opened valve reaches the brain.

The giraffe needs all of these characteristics at once.

Jack

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

So, simply put, evolutionists must, for each complex, living organism, and for each complex system within each organism, come up with scenarios to explain how, gradually, one incremental mutation at a time, such complex systems and beings could come to be. At the same time, each system component must be working on its own. We’ll examine a couple examples over the next few days.

For this recording, click the icon.

Jack

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

It’s probably a good idea to understand a phrase popularized within the Christian community by Behe and others: Irreducible complexity. To better understand the importance of irreducible complexity, we must first recall the basic tenets of the theory of Darwinian Evolution. There are only two mechanisms that are believed to make evolution possible.

The first mechanism is natural selection, sometimes referred to as the survival of the fittest. Most of us, creationist or evolutionist, don’t have a problem with this concept. Natural selection doesn’t belong to, neither was it first expressed by, an evolutionist. But, as the Dutch botanist Hugo DeVries wrote in his book Their Origin By Mutation, “Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest.��? In other words, natural selection can’t create any thing new, but can only eliminate what is already created.

You can click the icon to hear this radio spot.

Jack

The words of Jesus, in answer to His disciples’ question about the details of His return, are recorded by Luke, Chapter 17. In that night, Jesus said, two shall be sleeping in bed, one shall be taken and the other left.

Surely a nearby scientist or philosopher listening to Jesus would see no problem with His statement, for Jesus said He would be returning at night and that two would be sleeping in bed. .But the rest of Jesus’ answer may seem confusing, for He goes on to say that two women will be grinding, and two men will be working in the field, one taken and the other left.

Grinding meal was traditionally done in the morning, and no one worked in the field at night. But Jesus also said He would be coming at night.True enough, it will be night, somewhere, perhaps in Israel, when he returns, .but it will also be dawn, dusk, morning and afternoon elsewhere in the world.

The support actually provided by science for and against religious belief is very much exaggerated in today’s culture. The reason for this is understandable. Science, when operating within its own arena, has been quite successful.

For example, in a typical environmental laboratory like mine there is a wide variety of scientific experiments, if you will, occurring every single day. Such a lab has a number of instruments, standards, equipment, tools, glassware, and personnel...

jack

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackThe world’s population, by generally accepted historical information, was, in 1700 AD, 600,000,000, in 1800 AD, 900,000,000…a .4% rate increase.

Due to war, natural disaster, food availability, etc., calculating population growth is an imprecise business. But we do know that the estimated population increase between 1700 and 1800, .4%, predated the great advances made in medicine associated with increased rate growth that would occur in late 19^th and 20^th century. Last time we used calculations to verify the accuracy of Genesis as it describes those 70 Semites that became a nation of an estimated three million within 430 years. Now, using this premedical rate of .4%, we can use population calculations to test another Biblical event, Noah’s worldwide flood.

Jack

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

Let’s say you read in the Bible that a little clan of 70 Semites, who in about 1850 BC came down from Palestine, led by Jacob, through Beersheba to Egypt to live near Jacob’s son Joseph, and that this small group of 70 Semites, within just 430 years, grew to a population of some three million. Can we believe it?

But knowing what we now know, one will find it difficult to disagree with the conclusion by the eminent Rylands University scholar, F.F. Bruce, stating near the end of his book “Some writers may toy with the fancy of a Christ-myth, but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as that of Julius Caesar. It is not the historians who propagate the “Christ-myth theories.”

John’s influence on Polycarp is evident in his letter to the Philippian church, quoting 1^st John 4:3, for example, stating, “For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist”. And Polycarp also borrows heavily from 1^st and 2^nd Timothy, when he wrote “I exhort you all therefore to be obedient to the word of righteousness and to practice all endurance, which you saw with your own eyes in Ignatius, Zosimus, Rufus, in others also who came from among yourselves, as well as in Paul and the rest of the Apostles; being persuaded that all these ran not in vain but in faith and righteousness, and that they are in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. For they loved not the present world, but Him that died for our sakes and was raised by God for us.”

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon...Jack

Last time we began to embark on a journey through time, introducing some of those champions of faith, using Eusebius, the third century historian, as well as other viable sources. The power, reliability and accuracy of God's Word is preserved and presented to us by the mosaic comprised of their lives and deaths. Eusebius, as one source, living between 263 and 339 AD, has often been dubbed the Father of Ecclesiastical History. This great historian enthusiastically dedicated his life and energy to documenting the first 300 years of Church history. When reading his summary, History of the Church, it quickly becomes clear that his theme is :  the working of God"s providence through the apostolic succession.

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon...Jack

Sometimes, when I’m feeling like I’m having a rough time, I’ll crack open and read a chapter out of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

While reading this historical account of persecutions all the way back to Nero’s in AD 67, one can’t help but be amazed at the grace of God, and the courage of these lovers of God, these martyrs for Christ. And John Foxe knew the scriptures, Old Testament and New, clearly understanding grace, forgiveness, communion, and the Son-ship and the deity of Christ. John Foxe, who lived from 1516 to 1587, recorded the persecutions and martyrdoms of notable Christians, from Coomans, Hues and others in 1568, Ridley and Latimer in 1555, Calvin, Huss, Bunyan, Tyndale, Luther and Wickliffe, to the early 1300’s, and thence back to the Apostles themselves. When you read the writings of ancient, devout followers of Christ, you are peering into their spiritual insights, personal prayer lives, opinions about entertainment, clothing, work, and every other aspect of daily life.

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon...Jack

In the last couple of days we've been looking at similarities among cultures and noting that most entertain myths and beliefs similar in many ways to a primordal paradise, a Garden of Eden.

 Among the most intriguing ancient traditions to me is that reported of the Miautso tribes, who at one time occupied most of inland China south of the Yangtze River. These tribes have been gradually driven into the mountains of the southwest by the better-armed and better-organized Chinese.

 As explained by the translator, Edgar Truax, "The Miao traditions are very precise, as compared with those of many primitive peoples, because they are not only handed down in metrical form, but, also, they are in couplets, in which the same or similar meaning is expressed in different wording, so that the second sentence acts as a definition of the first, where it might otherwise not be clear. This is very much like one form of Hebrew poetry.

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To listen to the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon...Jack

We've been recently exploring the idea that there is, in our past, a cultural memory of a paradise, where there was no death, disease or pain.

Alene Oestreicher, in a 1989 ICR Impact article, compares Genesis 2 with the Greek beliefs from the 8th century B.C. She quotes Hesiod; "At first the immortals who dwell on

Olympus created a golden race of mortal men, and they lived like gods, carefree in their hearts, shielded from pain and misery. Helpless old age did not exist, and with limbs of unsagging vigor they enjoyed the delights of feasts, out of evil's reach.”

There was such tradition already in Greek culture centuries before ancient Homer penned the Iliad. The even more ancient Sumerians’ Eden traditions speak of a time when there was no sin and where animals lived together in harmony; when man was in harmony with deity and never died. The ancient Chinese Kwang-tze in 400 BC presented, among many other Eden-like ideas, that a woman’s desire for knowledge brought forth the end of this paradise. Even the ancient language of the Chinese, with symbols reaching back through the ages of a 4500 year, unbroken civilization, is deeply rooted in a primordial paradise.  

The Maitzu, ancient people in the mountains of Southwest China, have a verbal, amazingly Genesis-like tradition of Creation, of a catastrophic flood, a Tower of Babel, and a geneology that reaches all the way back to Seth, Adam’s son, and the ancestors of the Native American tribe near the Grand Canyon today refer to a world wide flood as the Canyon’s cause. 

The first that comes to mind is the theory that the evolution of humans is demonstrated within the developing human embryo. According to some, if you look at the various stages of development of the human embryo during a women’s pregnancy, you can see the various stages of human evolution. The main arguments for embryonic recapitulation are the supposed "gill slits" (left over from fish), "yolk sac" (left over from the reptile stage), and "tail" (from the monkeys) in the human embryo. But even informed evolutionists have now abandoned this theory. The gill slits, so called, are never slits, nor do they ever function in respiration. They are actually four pairs of pouches: the first pair becomes germ-fighting organs; the second, the middle ear canals; the third and fourth pairs become the parathyroid and thymus glands. The yolk sac does not store food because the mother's body provides this to the embryo. In fact, the "yolk sac’s true function is to produce the first blood cells. The "tail" is no tail, but just the tip of the spine extending beyond the muscles of the embryo. The end of this will eventually become the coccyx, instrumental in the ability to stand and sit as humans do.

In our ongoing enlisting of some good examples of creatures that defy evolutionary theory by their very existence, we last presented a brief overview of the beaver, chicken egg and the Monarch butterfly. Before that we mentioned the Bombardier Beetle, the woodpecker and birds in general, and the octopus. Careful analyses of the sperm whale reveals a specialized, designed creature, with literally tons of features that must all be in place at once for its survival. Large lungs, special oxygen storage ability in their blood, extraordinary heart, extra circulatory control for pressure equalization, discontinuous sinus cavities, specialized lung tissue, reinforced inner ears, continuous backbone to the tail, are just a few examples, and all provide a dramatic, large scale demonstration to the observer that the whale is irreducibly complex...jack

The Beaver is another that is just another example of special design. Many “which came first��? and “how did the animal survive while developing it��? kinds of questions come to mind when one looks at its completed design and instinctual habits...jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

If any of you philosophers are searching for a successful marriage between philosophy and theology, let me recommend a book that, in my opinion, every Christian today should study: Mere Christianity, by CS Lewis. The book’s introduction and development is purely philosophical and demonstrates how argumentation itself, and the common perceptions of what is right and wrong, provide us with a clue to the meaning of the universe.

jack

The same argument was reiterated by Paul in Romans: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse��? (KJV, Romans 1:20). Pierce’s "Neglected Argument" stands as a challenge to any living philosopher or scientist who would like to do away with the need for God. What must be explained is the miraculous comprehensibility of the world of experience.

Jack

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackDr. John Oller quotes the early 20^th century philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, the recognized father of pragmatism, from Peirce’s published piece… "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." Therein Pierce insisted, "The endless variety in the world has not been created by law. It is not of the nature of uniformity to originate variation, nor of law to beget circumstance. When we gaze upon the multifariousness of nature we are looking straight into the face of a "living spontaneity."

Jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

How many of you high school and college students can find in your textbooks, shown as proof of evolution, series of pictures or photos of advancing stages of human and other mammals as they develop before birth?

Darwin said that embryological evidence was "second to none in importance." The idea that higher life forms go through the previous evolutionary chain before birth was popularized by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. It was later found that Haeckel forged the diagrams which he used as evidence for this theory.

Jack

Remember those textbook pictures of an ancient bird, with a mouthful of teeth, strange, arm-like, hooked wings, perched on a high branch, able only to glide to the next branch? It has been asserted that this bird, called the Archaeopteryx, shares 21 characteristics with dinosaurs. Research on various anatomical features of Archaeopteryx in the last ten years or so, however, has shown, in every case, that the characteristic in question is bird-like, not reptile-like.

Jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackIf science is a search for truth, then it follows that no scientific theory should be allowed to freeze into dogma, immune from critical examination and evaluation.

Jack

For your consideration; Are the stars speaking to us?

Jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

In Psalm 19, David proclaims that the Heavens declare, are telling the glory of God and the work of His hands, and that their testimony, incessant day after day and night after night, inaudibly utters articulate speech and shows, a universal language, speaking to all the world.

In the context of the Psalm we also see a contrasting but connected structure, speaking first of the heavens, and second of the scriptures. Psalm 19 is not just describing the mere wonder of the heavens, but is also telling us that the heavens contain a revelation from God.

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackThe final of a series of three on the nesting of principals and beliefs from the Old Testament book of Genesis within the ancient picture writing found on Chinese boneware and pottery.

jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

The second of a series of three on the nesting of principals and beliefs from the Old Testament book of Genesis within the ancient picture writing found on Chinese boneware and pottery.

jack

The following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, called "Akin for the Truth". To hear the spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....

Jack

For your consideration: What if an ancient language, originating from a 4500 year old, unbroken civilization...China...was found to contain unmistakable signatures of the Old Testament, the book of Genesis in particular? First of three in this series.

Jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackWhat we all thought took thousands, or millions of years, we saw happen in days, weeks and months at Mt.St. Helens!

Jack

Here are some more examples.

Jack 

But another interesting body of proof lies outside of the New Testament itself… that of what we call the Apostolic Fathers. The term “Apostolic Fathers��? refers to church leaders that lived during, or right after the original apostles. Many of these knew and were disciples of the Apostles.

For your review: the second of a series of three.

Jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackCritics today can be heard saying that The “old��? Jesus and “old Christianity��? are no longer relevant. Jesus did not rise from the dead. The canonical Gospels are late and cannot be trusted.

These claims meander along the lines of the centuries-old heresy inferring that the Biblical Jesus differs from the historical Jesus. Really, the logical question is this:  Is The New Testament Historical?

jack 

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

The quotations are so numerous and widespread that, if no manuscripts of the New Testament were extant, the New Testament could be reproduced from the writings of the early Fathers alone.

Geisler, 1986

Indeed, so extensive are these citations that, if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.

Bruce Metzger,   1992

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....Jack

What is life? is it just a bunch of chemicals all coincidentally mixed together to create functioning creatures like you and me? Or does it demonstrate prethought, information, design?  

 For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackAn example of misplaced or false argumentation...When, in 1860, Asa Gray conveyed by letter to Darwin that he thought the human eye too complex to evolve unaided (a scientific conclusion, based on study, reason and observation), Darwin retorted that he did not think the eye was designed because there was too much cruelty in the world (eg a wasp that plants its eggs in living insects or a cat that plays with mice) to allow him to conclude that the human eye was beneficiently designed (a religious conclusion, based on feelings and subjective interpretations, and, Christian scholars have argued, demonstrating Darwin's basic ignorance of the Biblical tenets within his own religious M.A. degree).

jack

For your consideration...the following is an excerpt from a radio spot on KAPL radio, Jacksonville, Oregon, called " Akin For the Truth". To hear the entire spot (a few minutes long), click the icon....JackFor your review, Straw Man, Ad hominem, False appeals to authority, etc., discussed.

jack

As mentioned previously, if you are looking for accuracy in Scripture, you will not be disappointed. Jack Cuozzo, an orthodontist, choosing to believe the Biblical account of mankind’s origins rather than that of materialists, was able to shed light on the Neanderthal controversy by x-ray photographing original fossil skulls. His conclusions are exciting, though no surprise to the Bible-believer. His account “Buried Alive” reads more like a James Bond diary than any dry research paper.

Dr. Steve Austin, geologist, said of himself that he used to be somewhat confused about the processes that formed the geologic structures of the earth. But after his research into blow holes and Spirit Lake following the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens, he was able to unlock mysteries previously unknown about Noah’s flood and catastrophism in general.

And if you are looking for accuracy in Scripture, you will not be let down. For instance, Dr.’s Ethyl Nelson and Dr. Kang analyzed ancient Chinese symbols and characters and, as they hoped, the Chinese language has, nested deep within its meanings, distinct echoes of Genesis in frequency that surpasses any possibility for coincidence. In their co-written book, “Discovery of Genesis”, they demonstrate the fact that the 4500 year old language is replete with direct reference to Biblical events.

Next, we are told, it becomes our task, as members of Christ’s body, to help facilitate the reconciliation of others to the same. We need to, as Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, speak that which we do know. Being, as Paul described in I Timothy 4, good ministers of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, saving ourselves and those that hear us. We should give ourselves to reading, exhortation and doctrine.